My Lump is Just a Lump!

I just got back from the endocrinologist. I made him feel my lump and he said it felt like just a lump to him, a… something. Nothing to worry about.

So, whew.

My rash has, of course, become less itchy on the ride home.

Oh, My Brief Thought on Dancing With the Stars

I forgot to say that we caught the end of Dancing with the Stars this week because it comes on right before… I don’ t know… something our television gets tuned to. So, Brandy lost and the person on the couch with me was like “I think Bristol Palin is cheating!” like the way you’d say… well, I shouldn’t make fun of how this person said it. But they were upset and disturbed.

I stuck up for her a little in that I don’t think she‘s cheating, but that she’s being cheated for.

But then I realized, this is not good for the Palins. If Bristol won because she seemed like a plausible winner or lost, but lost in a cute and gracious way, that would be good and I think would introduce good feelings about the Palins to people who just kind of vaguely know that they exist and that their mom is in politics (which, it’s important for those of us who are political wonks to remember, is most folks).

But, if the way the mainstream of America comes to learn about the Palins is through a narrative of “I think they’re cheating!” that’s not really an introduction you want, is it?

I don’t know. It seems a weird kind of shooting yourself in the foot.

But I could be wrong. I kind of hope she wins, though. And I can’t really put my finger on why.  Kind of because, to me, she comes across like a snotty but okay kid whose had a lot of responsibility thrust on her for a long time. So, her own money might be good for her. Help her kind of make a start of her own adult life. But second, because I’m interested to see what would happen if she won, if she’d accept winning or if she’d say, “Wow, I’m really grateful that so many people voted for me, but this should go to Jennifer so here, Jennifer.”

I don’t know. I guess I have sympathy for kids who can’t just be the royal assholes kids are without intense scrutiny and I hope they find their way.

Weird Things Left Unsaid

So, I watched the Obesity episode of “Our kids are all going to die!!!!” on NPT last night, which is not to make light of the grave health issues facing our state, but, whew, the somber “We are talking about something very important” tone gets oppressive after a while.

But I thought (as I said/will say at Pith at some point today) that over all it was well-done, that it brought up a lot of issues. I was upset by the headless and face-blurred fat kids at the beginning. After all, if this is a health issue, there’s no need to use camera tactics normally reserved for showing someone who is doing something wrong. And last night I was really struck by the time given to talking about the social stigma of being fat as if that’s a byproduct of being fat and not a byproduct of having to live in a world full of assholes.

Are health officials really advocating that victims of abuse attempt to appease their abusers? I don’t think they’d advocate that straight-on, but I sometimes wonder if they don’t get that’s what they’re doing in cases like this.

But this morning, when I was out walking the dog, the things that lingered were my concern that they spent too little time talking about people who feed babies too much, considering how fucked up women can be about food. I honestly don’t believe that concerns about a kid maybe being fat sometime in the future should outweigh concerns that women will freak out about having a kid who may be fat some time in the future and thus undernurish the baby now, while it needs food to grow itself.

There’s really something disturbing about the idea of baby diets. And I don’t think they should have brought it up if they weren’t going to provide actual guidance to mothers about how to tell when their babies are satiated. It was weird. They were all “You should breastfeed! Breastfeeding mothers learn the cues from their babies to tell when their babies are full!” and turned right around and said that part of the problem is that women who breastfeed are concerned that their babies aren’t getting enough to eat and thus bottle-feed on top of it (I’m assuming because they probably work, but that wasn’t specified). So, breastfeed because it will give you the magical ability to tell something about your baby that women who breastfeed demonstrably don’t have?

I’m all for breastfeeding, but I was really surprised they didn’t take a moment to be like “look for these signs.”

But the other thing I ended up still being stunned by is that never, not even once, in the show was it mentioned that childhood obesity might be a symptom of something–that, if you have three kids and they all eat the same things and exercise the same amount and one is fat, there might be some underlying medical condition you should go get checked out.

I read the other day that they now think as many as one in ten women could have PCOS, which is an endocrine disorder that is hardwired into you at a genetic level. And obesity is a symptom of it. One in ten is pretty damn common. And yet, there was no mention of it. It was all just “Your kids aren’t eating right. They’re not exercising enough. Here’s how we as a society need to change that.”

But, really, it still strikes me as strange that there was no mention, not even briefly, of “Something could be going wrong with your kid that needs medical attention beyond the doctor telling you to change your diet.”

Even “maybe change how we feed babies” was given some time.

But no time to “Make sure nothing else is going wrong.”

Weird.